Subject: I think so.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-03-26 22:44:00 UTC

It would all depend on how the events are going to be set up and executed in-story. It would also be important to determine what kind of tone you were going for with this, since there are so many interpretations of Batman and not all of them might work for the story one was trying to tell. Is Frodo going to run around in a bat-logoed outfit and purple gloves, and the story would be derived from the campy Adam West Batman? Is he going to be World's Greatest Detective Batman, finding out the secrets behind the elven mafia's history of crime, perhaps capping his discovery by dispensing justice with some well-placed punches and flying kicks? A Nolan-derived dramatic Batman? The version of Batman who always has the best gadgets? Some of those might not be mutually exclusive. I remember Adam West Batman having plenty of great gadgets.

It would be difficult to do well, since the temptation to make this too Batman and forget that it's still set in Middle-earth would be immense, but it's far from impossible. It would probably be best to have comedy as a central element, too, because, seriously, at a conceptual level, you are casting a hobbit as Batman. That is ridiculous, but not necessarily in a bad way, and Batman is no stranger to the ridiculous(see: 1960s TV show, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, pretty much the entirety of the Silver Age). Also, the author would probably need to refrain from introducing more than maybe one Middle-earthed version of a classic Batman villain, unless there was a very good in-story reason to have more than one. It wouldn't be good to lay the references on too thick. I can see a couple of characters that would translate adequately, like elven versions of Deadshot or Two-Face, but they'd have to be tied in to the main plot to make any sense there. Maybe elf-Deadshot could be the elf crime lord's personal hitman, or something, hunting down and killing any elves that get too nosy, and would eventually become obsessed with killing Bat-Hobbit after the hairy-footed hero escapes his assassination attempts one too many times. Which is to say, once.

Reply Return to messages